I did read they have a discourse pattern that I haven't seen in toki pona yet-- a type of subordination avoidance strategy

mi lukin e jan. jan li jo e waso lon luka. jan ni li sama.I saw the man carrying a chicken.I saw a man. The man was carrying a chicken. These men were the same person.

Anyhow, I'm skeptical that bumping grammar out of syntax and into discourse make a language much simpler. Some day I hope to demonstrate this by creating a language with all 2 word sentences, the longest sentence that chimpanzees have been able to reliably and intelligibly produce. (Source Adam's Tongue) The hypothetical conlang would have massive chains of interlocked 2 word sentences that would probably follow a lot of recognizable discourse patterns. And the chimps probably still wouldn't be able to use this hypothetical language.

janMato wrote:I did read they have a discourse pattern that I haven't seen in toki pona yet-- a type of subordination avoidance strategy

mi lukin e jan. jan li jo e waso lon luka. jan ni li sama.I saw the man carrying a chicken.I saw a man. The man was carrying a chicken. These men were the same person.

Anyhow, I'm skeptical that bumping grammar out of syntax and into discourse make a language much simpler. Some day I hope to demonstrate this by creating a language with all 2 word sentences, the longest sentence that chimpanzees have been able to reliably and intelligibly produce. (Source Adam's Tongue) The hypothetical conlang would have massive chains of interlocked 2 word sentences that would probably follow a lot of recognizable discourse patterns. And the chimps probably still wouldn't be able to use this hypothetical language.

janMato wrote:I did read they have a discourse pattern that I haven't seen in toki pona yet-- a type of subordination avoidance strategy

mi lukin e jan. jan li jo e waso lon luka. jan ni li sama.I saw the man carrying a chicken.I saw a man. The man was carrying a chicken. These men were the same person.

Anyhow, I'm skeptical that bumping grammar out of syntax and into discourse make a language much simpler. Some day I hope to demonstrate this by creating a language with all 2 word sentences, the longest sentence that chimpanzees have been able to reliably and intelligibly produce. (Source Adam's Tongue) The hypothetical conlang would have massive chains of interlocked 2 word sentences that would probably follow a lot of recognizable discourse patterns. And the chimps probably still wouldn't be able to use this hypothetical language.

Interesting example, but the use of a pronoun and the difference in volition of jan and waso might not make it the _best_ example. Perhaps we need a proof text free of TP pronouns (at least, free of 1st and 2nd person pronouns). That said, this discourse pattern shares some similarities with my (perhaps pleonastic) rough drafts of TP.